Last First Day of School

WOW!! I blinked.  Derek is now a senior and my baby, Trey is starting middle school.  I was able to snap these pictures.  I know they were thrilled to pose for these. They should be used to it by now.

Off to Bogle Jr. High for 7th Grade.

I snapped a pick of Trey at his bus stop.

Derek started the year out at Hamilton High School where he has been since he was a Freshman.  The first three days were great, then he got sick.  We were 10 days in the school year and Derek had already missed seven days.  We just couldn't bear to go through another year like last year, limping through his classes, maybe feeling well enough to go to school. Tons of missing assignments.  We are out of time, Derek is a senior and he needs to graduate.  We decided to put him in online classes through El Dorado High School where he did summer school.  I think he would rather be "in-person" school with his friends, but he knows he needs to graduate.  So far online school is going well.

Extreme Duplication Experience

 Curtis had a brilliant idea for his business.  When he originally moved into his current office space, there were cubicles in the main floor area right in front of a big window area. I always thought the cubes were odd and ruined the space.  

Curtis decided to remove the cubes, build a stage, fill the area with chairs bring in people from his EXP downline and put on an event for the people.  It was a big undertaking, but he pulled it off and it was a great success.  I even made him a sign.

Park City, UT, and ASU Football

 It has been thirty years since I met my lifetime friends in college at BYU-H.  Somehow we got the name Wicked Chicks, I think JJ came up with that name as well as "Painting Princess'".  We really were not Wicked, we were pretty wholesome.

We decided it was time for a reunion.  Park City, UT was the destination as it was pretty central for all of us, and Park City is a neat town.  Robert and his wife live in the area, so they drove over to see us.

We rented Electic Bikes and went on Adventure around Park City

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JJ, Steph, Mary, Marilyn

JJ, Steph, Marilyn, Jamie and Robert Donigan, Mary

Phase2 of this trip:  I was strategic about planning this around the ASU/BYU Football game in Provo Utah,  Curtis had been planning to go to this game for a while with his long-time employee Justin, who is a big ASU fan. Curtis treated Justin and his wife, April to a weekend in Utah for being a loyal employee.  I joined them for the second half of the weekend.

Someone Curtis knew he ran into

Curtis and Justin

Justin and April 

Justin is being introduced to a cougar tail.


BYU beat ASU, Justin and April were not happy about that.




We then went to the Olympic park where the 2002 Winter Olympics were held.
Most people think they need to go sky diving, or bungee jumping for a thrill.  Just go visit Olympic park and get a taste of what Olympians do every day.  It looks pretty fantastic what they do on TV, when you see it up close it is unreal what those human beings can do with their bodies and the heights and speeds they are reaching.

This is the front of the ski jump.  They have turned it into an innertube slide for the rookie tourists.

The tourists have to start on the small hill on the left, then they can move up to the hill in the middle. The small hill was plenty for us

This is us at the top of the small innertube slide/Olympic ski jump.  It was terrifying, I had my eyes closed for that 20 seconds of terror.  I can't imagine what the next hills are like and we were sliding down the bottom half on a tube, not starting at the very top jumping on skis.  CRAZY!!

Justin and Curtis also rode the Bobsled driven by a professional, and slower than what the actual Olympians do.  Their ride was about 60 mph, Olympians are about 75 mph.  They said it was the most thrilling ride they have ever been on, better than any roller coaster.  April and I were happy to watch.

It really is unbelievable what limits the Olympian's push.

It was a very fun weekend, Justin and April had never been to Utah, they loved it and loved park city.  They said it was a 9/10 only because ASU lost.

Las Vegas BYU vs UofA

 BYU was playing Arizona in Las Vegas, I got to tag along. We had a great time.

We tried a new airline called JSX.  Curtis was getting sick of commercial airlines.  Ever since COVID the Airlines have not been fun, flight attendants are CRANKY, passengers are rude not wanting to wear masks, just a cattle call.  Curtis heard about this "boutique airline"  it only holds 30 passengers, you arrive literally 20 minutes before take off.  It was such a nice change for not too much more money.

As usual, we had fun exploring the hotels.  This is the atrium at Bellagio

Here we are at the new Raider "Allegiant" Stadium.  It was beautiful

We met up with our old friends Bracken and Kristen Walker We used to go to BYU games together before we had kids

We went to the Michael Jackson show put on by Cirque du Solel it was amazing.

Our favorite kind of "outdoor" shopping

Best of all BYU beat Arizona, so Curtis went home happy and made the trip worthwhile.  There were soo many BYU fans there.  The concessions didn't sell much alcohol that game but they did run out of soda and ice cream .

Now it's official

 It's birthday season at our house. Dax is officially 21.  He is doing well in school and he survived "The Plague" as he calls it.  Life is good.  Dax didn't ask for much for his big day.  He said he just wanted to go to dinner in downtown Gilbert walk around and enjoy the neon lights/ Route 66 feel.  Curtis had bigger plans for him.

Now that Derek and Dax are both driving, they are going to different places at different times.  Sharing the car worked out great, in the beginning, most things were still done online due to the pandemic.  Now that things are getting back to normal and Dax will return to school on campus rather than online next month, he is doing more photoshoots for Curtis's Real Estate team and driving around the city a lot more.   We needed to make some arrangements.  This was Curtis' idea.

This was a great car with very low miles and a good price.  It just so happened to be Red, Dax's favorite color.

This Birthday shirt makes me laugh " I'm always disappointed when liars pants don't actually catch on fire"

I made this neon sign for Dax, going with the Neon/Route 66/car theme

Bosa Donuts for breakfast.

Dax was very surprised and grateful for this gift. 

We ended the evening by having Dax drive us down to Joe's Real BBQ in downtown Gilbert.  We went too early (summertime) we missed the Neon signs.  We will have to go back in the fall.  It was a fun day.




 

Crappy end to the school year

 Covid came in and really did a number in our house.  It took Derek months to feel better.  He was just worn down and struggling to feel well again.  Vomiting and no energy was his daily ritual.  On May 3rd he finally felt well enough to return to school, although he didn't make it the entire day.  It was touch and go for the next few weeks.  Occasionally he would make it an entire day, most of the time I had to pick him up after the first class, and some days he still did not feel well enough to leave the house.  We were just hoping he could be well enough to take his finals.  He made it to his finals and miraculously he did decent on his finals.  He ended up with C's in English, Chemistry, Weight Training, and US History.  He got a B on his health final but the teacher said he failed the course so he had to retake it.  I found out later I could have fought this since he had health issues. He will need to retake Algebra II.  I'm ok with that, I want him to have a good foundation in math.

  His final report card said he missed 69 days of school out of 180, about 40 of those absences happened in the last quarter.  Considering almost 12 weeks of the school year was online and he did school from home during "virtual learning" it would have been worse. There were several days during virtual learning he would not have been able to make it to school. 

Since Derek hadn't left the house in months, his hair got long and shaggy.  I snapped this picture the first day he returned to school.  He still didn't feel great and it was a few more weeks before he actually got a hair cut.  He looked amazing once he got his hair cut.

Then there was Trey...

On April 25th Trey started to have a headache.  The headache was so bad all he only wanted to lay down.  So that is what he did for the next 3 MONTHS.  I took him to multiple Doctors, his pediatrician, then a pediatric neurologist.  The medications they were prescribing for "persistent migraines" were not helping at all.  Trey continued to lay down, missing school, end-of-year projects, end of year parties.  It really was a terrible way to finish elementary school.  This was a never ending constant Migraine, Trey only felt relief by laying down.

By early June I started taking both Derek and Trey to a Naturopath Doctor.  Nothing else was working I figured it couldn't hurt.  I explained to Derek and Trey what a naturopath was and they said "it sounds like Voodoo" We started calling him Dr. Voodoo instead of his real name Van Driel. 

 On top of the headache issues, Trey started to have digestive issues. Nothing was going well for him.  I took him to the ER one Friday afternoon on May 28th.  He had been on the migraine medication for about 3 weeks and there was no progress, his neurologist just kept telling him to keep taking the meds.  His stomach was upset and Trey was just miserable.  The ER gave him a shot for the migraine, and some Miralax to drink.  Trey was very constipated (about 3 weeks worth).  No wonder he didn't feel good.

Trey in the ER feeling miserable

After a few days, the "drains" got unclogged and the digestive system started working again.  The headaches persisted.  From the first doctor visit, I suspected Trey's headaches were linked to COVID.  The doctors didn't seem to care. I started learning about other kids who started to have migraines after COVID.  It was due to high pressure from spinal fluid.  The next step the neurologist wanted an MRI.  I asked them if we could skip this step and go straight to the spinal tap.  They said "NO".  I asked them if we could at least schedule the spinal tap at the same time as the MRI.  I highly suspected the MRI wasn't going to show anything and they are so slow getting anything scheduled.  The MRI took one week just to schedule it then we would have to wait for the actual appointment and the results after a few days.   Then start over again trying to schedule the spinal tap.  They again said "NO".  On June 11th Curtis took Trey in for the MRI while I was up at Girl's Camp.

                                Lanae Jones, Taryn Johnson (TJ) and Marilyn Johnson (MJ) at Girls Camp 2021 up at Camp Raymond near Flagstaff, AZ

The MRI came back normal, which is good, there is no tumor but we still don't have answers for the migraines.  Starting all over again trying to schedule a Spinal Tap through the neurologist's office.  In the meantime, we amped up the visits to Dr. Voodoo.  Trey did start to see some improvement in his headaches from Dr. Voodoo's treatments but he still didn't feel good. We were really trying to avoid the spinal tap.  Trey was terrified to have the spinal tap and go under anesthesia.  

Trey getting Micro Current Treatment from "Dr. VooDoo"

After a few treatments with Dr. Voodoo, Derek finally started to feel "good" again as well.  

We were out of options, on June 25th Trey went in for the spinal tap.  Because of his age, they put him under anesthesia.  Trey was a nervous wreck and did not want to do this.  It kind of reminded me of how Curtis feels when he has to go under anesthesia.  I actually enjoy it, for me going under anesthesia is the best nap. It doesn't help that at the hospital that is no urgency to run anything on time.  We were told his procedure was scheduled for 9:30 a.m.  They told us to arrive at 8:00 so we did.  After a lot of hours waiting around and making Trey more anxious and scared they finally took him back around noon.  It's not like this kid hasn't been in pain for the last two months.  UGHH!

The anesthesiologist was fantastic.  She talked to Trey about what was going to happen and she even let him choose if he wanted the gas mask or an IV.  He chose the mask, then she even let me back in the procedure room until Trey was asleep just to calm his nerves.  

Trey in the procedure room about to get the "gas"  it was interesting to watch him go under.  It only took about 3 minutes for him to get into a deep sleep.  They kicked me out at that point and gave him an IV to get him even deeper. The anesthesiologist gave me a play-by-play of what his body was doing.  Did I mention that she was fantastic?    

The entire procedure took about an hour. When they brought me back to the recovery room Trey was all smiles and relieved that it was over.  He realized it was not nearly as bad as he anticipated.  The spinal tap showed he had excessive CSF (Cerebral Spinal Fluid) causing pressure on his brain and giving him a never-ending Migraine.  This is usually brought on by an illness.  

This Mom was right I figured it was excess spinal pressure brought on by COVID.  After a few days on a new medication, his headache was much improved.  Trey still has a slight headache but at least he can get out of bed and live his life.

June 2021's VIP

 Another trip around the sun for Curtis, this is last time around in his '40s.  Curtis turned 49 this year, he got the new big TV he has been wanting and we went for some family fun to  Octane Raceway for some Virtual Reality Zombie hunting, go-cart racing, and yummy food.  Derek was still not feeling well he came along but just as a bystander.  Trey was feeling a slight improvement from his headaches he at least felt like getting out of bed and going.  He was able to have some fun killing zombies and racing the cars.

Then we did it all over again for Father's day.  Curtis got a much-needed new phone.  It was a fun weekend of celebrating Curtis.

Virtual Zombie Hunting.  This was very fun even for me who usually gets motion sick with virtual anything.

Birthday Boy

Not surprising Curtis came in first, I came in last.  There were other people in our race

.  It was a fun day.